


Courage

by Laylah



Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Bloodplay, F/M, Pre-Canon, Risk Aware Consensual Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-22
Updated: 2007-10-22
Packaged: 2017-10-12 19:53:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/128449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laylah/pseuds/Laylah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He sits back on his haunches to admire her: this is the first time they have taken the luxury of a rendezvous in the capital, the first time they have had the leisure to strip entirely free of armor and obligations.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Courage

"No," Drace says, calm and certain as though she is yet passing judgment here. "Not that." Her body is strung taut beneath his, hard and scarred and muscular, a glorious disgrace to Archadian femininity. Zecht stills, scarf clutched in one hand, Drace's wrists in the other.

"No fear of fire or the knife," he says lightly, "yet you balk at a bit of silk?"

She smiles, more with her eyes than her mouth. "Surely that does not surprise you." Of course she knows what she is; if he stays helmed and guards his accent carefully, he can be mistaken for a man suited to the Magister's role, but she will never disguise her otherness. "Test my courage as you will, but there will be no doubt that I choose all we do here."

There is an argument Zecht could make in answer to that -- that what is tested with her hands free is less courage than submission, and to allow herself to be bound despite her reluctance would test her courage indeed -- but he knows better than to bring the habits of a barrister to bed. "Stay your hands, then," he says, and lets the scarf flutter down off the edge of his bed.

Drace crosses her wrists above her head, right atop left, the map of blue veins clear through her fair skin. She does not lower her eyes, as a doxy might when playing at such games, but watches him as wary and challenging as a falcon: willing perhaps to come to his hand, but never without talons.

"Your blade," she says. "Your promise."

"Your patience," he answers. "I do this not only for your pleasure." He sits back on his haunches to admire her: this is the first time they have taken the luxury of a rendezvous in the capital, the first time they have had the leisure to strip entirely free of armor and obligations. Though not -- never -- free of their marks of office. Drace bears a soldier's scars, just as Zecht does, the ragged lacerations of maces and the straight gouges of swords, the white furrows of clean injury and the purpled lines of poisoned wounds that have healed as much as they ever will. They change the topography of her body, those scars, making the familiar country of breasts and belly and thighs into a place both new and strange.

But she will not thank him for compliments when she awaits something more direct -- of all the Judges Magister she is perhaps the least patient. Zecht reaches for his bedside table, for the knife he has laid there, thin-bladed and fine, the sharpest of all his blades. Drace's eyes track its edge as he raises it to the light. "Shall we?" he says.

Drace nods.

Zecht lowers the blade, draws it feather-light across her skin below the sweep of her rib cage. Her breath hitches in her chest, and a shiver ghosts across her skin. The knife is just-sharpened, too finely honed to catch, leaving only the faintest track of white against her skin. Drace's breath comes short as Zecht traces her contours -- her rib cage, the hollow of her belly, the rise of her hip bones. The scant swell of her breasts, her body too lean and hard to afford much spare flesh. She shifts her weight, pushing toward the knife, and the movement brings him the scent of her cunt, sharp and rich. His cock swells between his legs.

"Careful," he says. "I wouldn't want to mark you accidentally."

The look in her eyes is starved and proud, and her hands flex against the pillow. "I will not beg," she says.

"I would not ask you to," Zecht says. She had admitted need enough by that statement alone. "Breathe." He draws her skin taut with one hand against her side, and waits to feel her chest rise and fall more deeply.

The knife bites easily, tracks across her stomach, and he cannot tell if the thin keening sound she makes is voluntary. This time the line is scarlet, fine at first as spider-silk, with beads of her blood strung slowly along its length. There is color in her cheeks, for once, a flush staining them, the black centers of her eyes wide.

"My lady is pleased?" Zecht asks.

Drace arches her back. "I know you have more than one pass in you," she purrs. She is ever desirable, but perhaps never more than this, with hunger giving her voice weight, holding herself willing and vulnerable before him.

"Indeed," he says, "I am not yet spent. My blade has more mettle to it than that."

Drace smiles, but will not give him her laughter, so Zecht asks instead for her moans. He draws the edge of the knife across her skin again, repeating the patterns he'd rehearsed before: arcs to echo her ribs, her hips; sweeping circles around her navel; tight spirals in the soft flesh of her breasts. The wounds are shallow and simple, neither blood nor pain enough to distress a soldier, but Drace shudders into them, making soft, breathy sounds like sobs. She is -- they are both -- paying too much attention to the knife, giving this thing more meaning by their care. It is undeniably sexual, from the rhythmic press of her thighs, the heaviness of his cock, but it is more than that, also: the spilling of blood is a sort of trust that outmatches simple rutting.

When any new marks would have to cross the older ones, when thin trickles of blood run crimson down Drace's ribs to stain his sheets, Zecht stops. He lifts away the knife, pressing his other hand between her thighs. Her wiry curls are damp, softened, and when he parts them he finds the folds of her cunt slick and hot. He presses two fingers into her without preamble, and she takes them easily, pushing toward his hand with a sound that's more growl than moan. "Would you have me lie still for this, also?" she asks.

Zecht smiles. "Quite the contrary," he says. "I pray you will move with me."

Drace uncrosses her wrists, sits up smoothly with her thighs locked around his hips for leverage, and reaches for him. Her kiss is rough and soldierly, her hands hard on his shoulders. When she pushes, he lets her guide him down onto his back, his fingers slipping free of her cunt -- he could fight her, but why should he, when she's demanding exactly what he wants?

"Yes," he says, hands on her thighs when she straddles him, and her lips pull back in a snarl as she pushes herself down on his cock. "Beautiful," Zecht says, because she is, bloodied and demanding, uncompromising in all she does.

"Flatterer," Drace says, her voice breathy and tight. "Move."

"As my lady commands," Zecht says, holding her by the hips and rocking up hard. She slides around him, warm and slick, her back arching as he drives in deep.

"There," Drace says, leaning back, pushing hard against him. "Like that."

Zecht reaches up, cups her breasts in his hands, squeezes -- the cuts split open again, blood welling around his fingers, and Drace moans. She slides a hand down between her legs to press against her clit as she rides his cock. Her eyes are open but unfocused, her lips parted, all her attention turned to the slide of flesh against flesh.

She is no more patient in seeking climax than she is in seeking victory, and it is not long before Zecht feels the shiver and clench of her cunt around him -- her back bowed and her breath short. He slows, as she catches her breath in its aftermath, but she shakes her head. "Do not hesitate," she says. "I am not so selfish as to deny you now."

"Hold tight to me, then," Zecht says, splaying one hand across the small of her back to keep her close -- and rolls them over, so neatly that he does not slip free. Drace tenses beneath him for a moment as her shoulders hit the mattress, but she is too proud to protest:

"Do it," she says instead, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, raising her knees.

Zecht hides his smile in the hollow of her shoulder. "Gladly," he says. He pushes one of her thighs up, toward her chest, so he can thrust deep: this is more difficult for her by far than baring her flesh to the knife, and he can feel the struggle in the raw shudder of her breath. But she allows this, still, and that _permission_ as much as the slick heat of her cunt makes him desperate, makes him hurried, makes his climax overtake him like the Mist-rage, wracking and brilliant with color.

He pulls out, after, and eases down beside her. The blood has dried on her skin, the color of old iron, and her limbs tremble just slightly when she lets him go. But still she has the composure to cast a simple Cure, to wash her skin in light so that this indulgence will not scar.

"Forgive me," he says. "I should have offered."

Drace shakes her head. "I think chivalry is less doing for a lady what she can do herself, and more offering her aid that's truly needed." She glances sideways at him, and smiles. "By which I mean, you should offer me the use of your shower."

Zecht laughs. "Consider it as yours," he says, and watches her rise, easy in her movements with the healing. Perhaps he'll follow her, in a few minutes, while her mood is so forgiving. Morning will likely bring new assignments for both of them, after all; best to steal what they can tonight.


End file.
